TIMES BOOK PRIZES 1992 : CURRENT INTEREST : THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN

After producing a sensation with his 1989 article “The End of History,” Francis Fukuyama has refined his argument and expanded it into a full-length book. Perhaps it can best be read as an answer, three-quarters of a century later, to Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West.” Where the gloomy German found reason for near-despair, relieved only by stoicism, an ebullient American offers reason for hope. He assaults head-on the pessimistic and relativist stance he finds characteristic of contemporary intellectuals. He aims to refute their forebodings about the century to come. Where Spengler envisaged for the future a worldwide struggle among Caesar figures, Fukuyama foresees the triumph of liberal democracy. What the two have in common is a certainty that one can find a direction in the history of mankind--a certainty that professional historians jettisoned long ago.

It would have been more surprising to have advanced such an argument before the epoch-making year 1989. Fukuyama has seized the opportunity provided by the collapse of communism and exploited it with a thoroughness which I for one find unique. According to him (he favors mechanistic metaphors), the motors of one-directional historical change are two in number: “the logic of modern science” (and more particularly its application in technology) and “the desire for recognition” (of which more later). Liberal democracy stands at the convergence of the two, with no major authoritarian contender on the horizon.

The argument about science and technology is the easier to make. Few would deny their cumulatively progressive character. And few also would question their role in the demise of the Soviet Union. Here nearly all the experts were mistaken: The Soviet industrial apparatus proved far less effective than they had imagined. In one of his most telling points, Fukuyama notes that this apparatus, whose massive triumphs in the 1930s astounded the West, failed to adjust half a century later to “the requirements of the information age. . . . It was in the highly complex and dynamic ‘post-industrial’ economic world that Marxism-Leninism as an economic system met its Waterloo.” Moreover, defeat came about through “an internal crisis of confidence.” American armaments, Fukuyama implies--once again assaulting received wisdom--had little to do with “victory” in the Cold War.

Nevertheless he finds no necessary connection between liberal democracy and capitalism (which, incidentally, he defines broadly enough to include the advanced welfare-state policies of social democracy): A “bureaucratic-authoritarian state” such as Singapore may “do better” than its “democratic counterparts.” Mere efficiency, he contends, does not suffice to explain the current worldwide advance of the liberal-capitalist order; nor does the prevalent “moral primacy” of “comfortable self-preservation.” Something “nobler” is required.

It is here that Fukuyama’s second “motor” for one-directional historical change enters the argument. It is here that he advances his most original intellectual construct: “the desire for recognition.” This notion is breathtaking in scope: It extends through centuries and even millenia, all the way from the self-assertiveness of primitive chieftains to the current mass pressure for full equality. “As people become wealthier, more cosmopolitan, and better educated, they demand not simply more wealth but recognition of their status. It is this completely non-economic, non-material drive that can explain” a strenuous preference “not just for market economics but for free governments.” And therewith Fukuyama’s scientific and ideal lines of argument intersect.

The foregoing outline cannot do justice to the rich and nuanced character of the data with which Fukuyama buttresses his central contentions. Nor, on the other side of the ledger, does it suggest the excess baggage with which he has loaded them down. He invokes the ghost of Hegel at nearly every turn --a benign, “liberal” Hegel, as mediated by his Russo-French interpreter Alexandre Kojeve. (Hadn’t this cumbersome philosopher done damage enough already by addling the mind of the young Karl Marx?) Fukuyama also favors Greek words; without them, his argument would be perfectly clear and lighter in tone. This penchant epitomizes a certain portentous parade of learning (again like Spengler!) which lengthens his book unnecessarily and involves him in digressions.

More substantively, Fukuyama’s optimism leads him to relegate to the short term the “reassertion . . . of cultural identities”-- primarily ethnic and religious--that is currently threatening the peace, and not only in the Balkans. Islamic fundamentalism he takes seriously; comparable revivals elsewhere he tends to treat as blips on the screen. But who knows how long this effervescence will last? The short term may be very long indeed.

Finally, the matter of an end to history: It is conceivable that if nations continue to turn democratic, the old history in the sense of diplomacy and war may virtually cease. But what about internal history, social and cultural? What about struggles over the division of the economic pie? Switzerland--the model for the future--may have been spared armed conflict for nearly a century and a half; nevertheless its citizens have not totally succumbed to complacency and boredom; every so often a national referendum on a major issue like immigration stirs Swiss society to its depths.

“There have been few, if any, instances of one liberal democracy going to war with another.” This is the clinching point of Fukuyama’s argument--the undeniable fact that in the end overrides the flaws in his book. His vision of a democratic world at peace offers hope even to skeptics. And they may take comfort from the realization that when he at length arrives at “the last man” who figures in his title, he introduces him not with dogmatic assertion but with a set of questions and possibilities: Perhaps humanity will discover that simple happiness does not suffice; perhaps people will hanker after the old heroic virtues and “drag the world back into history with all its wars, injustice, and revolution.” Who can tell? Pending further clarification, Fukuyama leaves his readers with the tantalizing admission that he has found no “consensus on what constitutes man and his specific dignity.”

CURRENT INTEREST

THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN, By Francis Fukuyama (The Free Press)

FINALISTS

THE LADY AND THE MONK: Four Seasons in Kyoto, By Pico Iyer (Alfred A. Knopf)

DEN OF THIEVES, By James B. Stewart (Summit Books)

CULTURE WARS: Making Sense of the Battles Over the Family, Art, Education, Law and Politics, By James Davison Hunter (Basic Books)

CHAIN REACTION: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics, By Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall (W.W. Norton)